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DEFENSE INDUSTRY

Sea Corp. lands $86M Navy contract

SEA CORP was awarded an $86 million contract to provide support and services to the electromagnetic department at Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport as prime contractor leading 26 subcontractors.

Under the contract, awarded by the Naval Sea Systems Command, Sea Corp. is the prime contractor leading a team with 26 subcontractors to help provide support services in system engineering, software engineering, maintenance engineering, ship alterations, technical documentation, test and evaluations, and library and database development for imaging, electronic warfare and communications systems used aboard Naval ships.

As the prime contractor, veteran-owned Sea Corp. will coordinate services to NUWC. According to a company release, many of the Rhode Island subcontractors indicated an interest to increase their current workforce and those not in Rhode Island expressed interest in opening Ocean State offices.

“This represents a continuation of work that we are already doing to support the Navy. The challenge before us will be to continue with our successful coordination of a large group of companies, each with unique qualities, competencies and facilities, to provide the Navy cost-effective support at an exceptionally high technical level,” Dave Lussier, Sea Corp.’s senior vice president, said in prepared remarks.

According to Sea Corp. President Larry Willner, the company’s subcontractor team includes 13 small business that are disadvantaged, women-owned, disabled-veteran-owned, veteran-owned or companies from underutilized geographic areas. “We plan to use the unique expertise that those small companies provide and integrate it with the capabilities of the large companies on our team to offer a significant range of services and flexibility,” said Willner.

“The significance of this award is that it is a continuation of the key work we have been providing the Navy for a number of years,” company co-founder and CEO Brian Gilligan said in a statement. “Sea Corp. has proven to be a capable integrator of services that has helped technically competent small businesses to apply their unique talents and work with large companies to provide complex support work as part of task teams.”

“Our company philosophy has always been to recruit and retain high-quality people who are competent, energetic and willing to do whatever is necessary to get the job done, be it right here in Rhode Island or on a submarine in a foreign port halfway around the world,” added Gilligan.

The $86 million is the latest in a series of successes for the Middletown-based company, which received a $1 million Phase II Advanced Development Small Business Innovative Research grant for missile launch technology at the end of August and signed another $29 million contract with NUWC earlier in the month.

Sea Corp., headquartered in Middletown’s Aquidneck Corporate Park, has been a Rhode Island company since its 1981 inception. It employs roughly 360 professionals including engineers, technicians, scientists, management and support staff.

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